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Baked Herrings

Baked herrings seasoned with pepper, sea salt, mace, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Baked Herrings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale and clean the fish carefully, without washing unless necessary.

  2. Split the fish down the back and remove the backbones.

  3. Sprinkle the inside with a mixture of pepper, coarse sea salt, and powdered mace.

  4. If there are any roe, enclose them in the fish.

Bake

  1. Layer the fish in a deep baking dish with cloves, peppercorns, and bay leaves.

  2. Cover with a mixture of equal parts vinegar and water, and sprinkle with more salt.

  3. Tie a sheet of oiled or buttered paper over the top of the dish.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Herrings
Form the main body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender as they bake.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish during baking.
Bay leaves
Contribute a subtle aromatic flavour to the fish and the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cover with the vinegar and water mixture. The acid and liquid keep the delicate fish moist and seasoned as it bakes, so the mixture must fully cover the layered fish before the paper goes on.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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